'Homeopathy is not witchcraft, it is nonsense on stilts,' said one doctor. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Homeopathic treatments should be banned from the NHS and taken off pharmacy shelves designated for medicines, doctors said today .

Members of the British Medical Association said homeopathic remedies should be relegated to shelves "labelled placebos" and that NHS money should not be spent on treatments that are scientifically implausible.

Proposing the motion at the BMA's annual representative meeting in Brighton Mary McCarthy, a GP from Shropshire, said homeopathic doctors claimed that it made people feel better. "Lots of things make you feel better – a sunny day, the smell of the sea, a hug, retail therapy," she said.

"It can do harm by diverting patients from conventional medical treatments."

She said the issue was about NHS funding and promotion and would not prevent homeopaths from practising.

Tom Dolphin, a member of the BMA's junior doctors' committee, backed the motion. He said he had previously described homeopathy as witchcraft, but now wanted to apologise to witches for making that link.

"Homeopathy is not witchcraft, it is nonsense on stilts. It is pernicious nonsense that feeds into a rising wave of irrationality which threatens to overwhelm the hard-won gains of the enlightenment and the scientific method," he said.

"We risk, as a society, slipping back into a state of magical thinking when made-up science passes for rational discourse and wishing for something to be true passes for proof.

"Let's stop wasting scarce NHS money on something with plenty of evidence to show it does not work.

"Strike a blow for science and protect our patients from this insidious practice."

Outside the meeting, about 50 supporters of homeopathy gathered to protest against the doctors' stance. There was also some support within the hall.

"There's a big push that we practise evidence-based medicine, however, patients don't always have evidence-based symptomatology," said John Garner, a GP from Edinburgh.

He said he had seen patients with a range of complaints but investigations had found no cause. "Some of these patients, for whatever reason, find benefit and relief in homeopathic treatments, because of a placebo effect or not."

Homeopathic remedies have been funded by the NHS since its inception, but there is growing opposition from scientists to spending public money, at a time of cuts, on such treatments. In many homeopathic remedies there is no trace of an active substance, because it has been so heavily diluted.

The Society of Homeopaths claims that around 600 doctors prescribe homeopathic remedies and points out that the NHS spends just 0.001% of its £11bn drugs budget on them.

The Department of Health said it was considering its response to a report on homeopathy by the science and technology committee, which recommended that the NHS should no longer fund homeopathy.